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Changing Infrastructures, Measuring Exclusion (CHIME)

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Summary: The project is funded by the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DLTR), and spans the concerns of a number of academic and governmental fields. It explores the effects on social-spatial exclusion of infrastructural changes such as the congestion charging measures of Road User Charges (RUCs) and Work-Place Parking Levies (WPPLs).

Project Description

Aims

This project investigates the social implications of congestion charging policies within UK Local Authorities. Its primary goals are to design and test practical methods and strategies with which to assess the consequences of such schemes for social networks and attendant patterns of inclusion and exclusion. The work will extend debate and analysis of such issues between Local Authorities and academics with expertise in the various fields of social exclusion/inclusion, changing transport infrastructures, integrated transport strategies and congestion charging.

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The Project

The project is funded by the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DLTR), and spans the concerns of a number of academic and governmental fields. It explores the effects on social-spatial exclusion of infrastructural changes such as the congestion charging measures of Road User Charges (RUCs) and Work-Place Parking Levies (WPPLs).

We approach the project through the concept of social-spatial exclusion, seeing this as an emergent property of interaction between three factors: social obligations and compulsions to proximity, individual resources of time and money and the rationalities used to trade between them, and the physical infrastructures of various urban transportation networks.

The first part of the project looks at how a number of Authorities, who have already expressed interest in congestion charging, presently understand and measure social-spatial exclusion and inclusion, and explores, through a series of practical 'experiments, possible methodologies for understanding and measuring it in the future.These 'experiments will make use of existing data, for instance, on social networks, social obligations and physical infrastructures. In addition, new work will be needed to investigate the ways in which resources of time and money are juggled in the process of meeting social obligations when confronted with infrastructural changes. Part of this work will focus on a single infrastructural innovation (for example the introduction of parking charges at a single work-site), exploring through semi-structured interviews, the responses of those affected, individually and by household, in order to better understand how factors of social-spatial exclusion are managed in practice.Urban areas and the transport infrastructures which 'servethem are not static, but dynamic forms which are influenced by numerous factors. These range from the agencies of various actors (from the transport providers and the local authorities to households and individuals) to wider aspects of globalisation with its attendant mobilities and flexible working arrangements, suburbanisation and urban development. We intend to draw attention to academic perspectives on these issues, particularly their social and temporal aspects (producing a discussion paper on infrastructures and time), and to relate these to developments on the ground.To this end we will be studying two examples of recent infrastructural change, with an eye to examining a) how households in each area have re-negotiatiated routines, habits and their social networks, and also b) how those in the public, private and voluntary sectors can collaborate to minimise the social-spatial exclusionary impacts associated with such infrastructural changes.

The results of these studies will be fed into a workshop involving academics and government officers in order to ensure that the findings can be taken into consideration in the implementation of congestion charging measures in the future, with a resulting minimisation of social-spatial exclusion.

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Research Significance

Public Sector

Purpose of Research

Academic Research - Externally Funded

Project Funder

Department for Transport

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